Wages and Value: We Get What We Pay For

Parade Magazine just published their annual report on what people earn. The report shows us what professions are most important to us. By reviewing the numbers, we can see whose great intelligence, finely honed technical skills, and back-breaking labor are are making the most valuable contributions to the health, education, and general well-being of our society. Here are some examples:

College Professor $64,900...Pro Soccer Player $ 50 million
Lt., Fire Dep't. $64,000....Movie Actor $25 million
School Nurse $88,000...Author of novels $28 million
Probation Officer $45,000...Rock Singer $15.6 million
Police Lt. $64,000...Radio/TV Host $12 million
Respiratory Therapist $87,000...Pro Tennis Player $3.8 million
Children's Librarian $30,700...Singer/designer $175 million
Child Care Provider $24,000...Actor $3.3 million
Registered Nurse $76,000...Country Singer $75.9 million
Pharmacist $87,000...Baseball Player $18 million
Guidance Counselor $54,000....Actor $23 million
Medical Resident $45,000...Actor $3.5 million
Minister $9,000....Olympic Skier $5 million
Flight Inspector $61,000...Actress $8 million

When you add up the numbers in both columns and divide the results, you can quickly see that entertainment and sports are 570 times as valuable to us as health care, law enforcement, education. For some reason, I did not find some research scientists, construction workers, ice skaters, or pro golfers to put in the list. The value of their contributions must not be worth talking about.

I have been accused of saying that entertainers and sports figures are worthless, but that is not true. These people work very hard at playing their guitars, shaking their hips, and tossing balls with extreme accuracy. Moreover, we all need a certain amount of entertainment to relieve the stress and monotony of our depressing and arduous lives.

We all establish these values ourselves, when we attend a basketball game, or view and call in to American Idol, by seeing a movie or buying a DVD, or by voting down a measure to increase teachers' pay. So if the robbers and rapists have not been put in jail yet, if the roads are full of potholes, if our children cannot read or write, if we don't have a cure for cancer yet--it's because we find it 570 times more important to watch a rock singer on TV.